North Korea said Thursday it supports dialogue aimed at preventing war and denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but will "never beg" for it, as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson landed in the communist state with the hope of defusing tensions.
North Korea's foreign ministry also accused the United States of scuttling the six-nation denuclearization-for-aid deal they signed in 2005
along with South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, arguing Washington broke
its promise to normalize relations with Pyongyang.
"We support all proposals for dialogue such as six-party talks that arise from the desire to prevent war on the Korean Peninsula and achieve
denuclearization, but we will never beg for dialogue," an unnamed ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The statement reiterated that the ongoing uranium enrichment program in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, serves a "peaceful" purpose, a claim U.S. officials have rejected as false. Highly enriched uranium provides the North a second track to developing nuclear bombs in addition to plutonium-based ones.
In a separate dispatch, the KCNA said Richardson and his entourage landed in Pyongyang, but did not give details. Invited by the North's top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan, Richardson is on a private trip aimed at taming the
regional tensions sparked by the North's bombardment of a South Korean border island on Nov. 23.
Richardson, a Democrat politician who has made numerous trips to North Korea in the past, said in Beijing that he hopes to visit Yongbyon to see
the light-water nuclear reactor under construction.
"The construction of a self-dependent light-water reactor and the production of enriched uranium for securing fuel are peaceful nuclear activities for creating electricity," the North said, arguing the U.S. is using them as an excuse to avoid talks.
Washington and Seoul dismiss any early resumption of nuclear negotiations until Pyongyang takes substantial steps toward denuclearizing itself under the six-nation agreement.
"By demanding various prerequisites, the U.S. is persistently avoiding all proposals for dialogue while trying hard to stoke moods for war on the Korean Peninsula and around it," the North said.
Chances of a conflict between the Koreas increased to the highest point in years when the North shelled the South's Yeonpyeong Island last month, killing two marines and two civilians.
North Korea claims it fired after South Korea shot shells toward its territory in a U.S.-backed plot to trigger another war on the peninsula. The South denies the charge and has condemned the shelling as an inhuman crime for which it will make the North pay, prompting Pyongyang to vow "merciless" retaliation if provoked.
On Thursday, South Korea's military said it plans to hold a live-fire artillery drill this week or early next week on Yeonpyeong, in what would be the first such maneuver since the North's shelling.
North Korea has threatened to retaliate "mercilessly" should the South fire across their disputed Yellow Sea border, warning that any shells shot from Yeonpyeong would fall in its side of the boundary.
Some 20 military personnel from the U.S. forces in South Korea will also help South Korean troops in the one-day drill to be held between Saturday and Tuesday, military officials here said.
Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, traveled to North Korea in the 1990s to secure the release of American prisoners. He also visited Pyongyang in 2007 to bring back the remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce.